As airlines face increasing pressure to improve profitability, they are striving to carry the greatest number of passengers feasible while keeping their fleets in revenue service as much as possible; all without compromising passenger convenience. In this regard, it has been recognized that decreasing passenger boarding time may significantly lower the amount of time between revenue flights, and thereby increase profitability to airlines.
One way airlines can move toward this goal is to reduce airplane turn time. Turn time is the time required to unload an airplane following arrival at a gate and to ensure that the airplane is ready and loaded for its next departure. However, airplane turn time continues to increase. According to some studies, the actual speed at which passengers boarded an airplane (enplane rate) has slowed by more than 50 percent, down to as low as 9 passengers per minute since the 1970s. For many airlines the largest factor in turn time is the passenger boarding process.
Part of the increase in turn time in both enplaning and deplaning is due to the increased reliance of passengers on carry-on luggage. That is, the time required to effect passenger boarding (enplaning and deplaning) has continued to increase as more passengers utilize overhead storage bins to stow their carry-on luggage. Specifically, when a passenger stops in the aisle of an aircraft to stow or retrieve an item in the overhead bin, passengers behind the stowing/retrieving passenger cannot continue down the aisle to their seats or toward the aircraft exit. Such blockage is sometimes referred to as bottlenecking.